Televisualist: I Don’t Think This New Show Has Enough Conspiracies in It

Each week, Torontoist examines the upcoming TV listings and makes note of programs that are entertaining, informative, and of quality. Or, alternately, none of those. The result: Televisualist.

“I do not fear the mortal realm of Midgard, thanks to what I carry with me.” “A magical horn?” “A contractual obligation for Marvel to employ me in the next two THOR films.”

Monday

The Bachelor concludes, which means a new Bachelorette will certainly soon be upon us. It is kind of like the turning of the seasons, if all of the seasons sucked. (CFMT, 8 p.m.)

Maybe you’ve been thinking, “Huh, it has been almost four months since I got to watch a new J.J. Abrams executive-produced science fiction pilot?” Well, now you can watch Believe, which is about as Abramsy as a show can get: a young girl with superpowers, an innocent death row convict as her protector, and not one but two conspiracies (a good one and an evil one!) that want the girl with the superpowers to become what they want her to become. Plus, as you might expect, all the oddly vague dialogue fraught with meaning that one could hope for! The show is hyping the fact that Alfonso Cuarón directs the first episode, but he’s not sticking around for the long haul so… yeah. (CTV, 10 p.m.)

Tuesday

This week on Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Sif shows up! Yes, Jaimie Alexander from the Thor movies and everything! This is terribly exciting and makes up for the show having been fairly disappointing all season, maybe! Or not, depending. If you don’t want to get excited about Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. at this point, we entirely understand. (CTV, 8 p.m.)

Wednesday

Working the Engels is interesting in that it’s a Canadian/American co-production, but it’s also a sitcom, which is new (all of those previous Canadian/American co-production series have been dramas). The usual expectations, however, are met: Canadian star (Andrea Martin), mostly Canadian cast, shot in Canada but not aggressively trumpeting that fact, premise that works easily in either country (widow tries to keep her husband’s law firm operating despite not being able to practice law), et cetera. (Global, 8 p.m.)

Oh, hey, The Wedding Singer, how are you? Haven’t aged at all since you were made, because you’re a semi-parodic period piece and therefore effectively immune to aging? That’s pretty great of you, Wedding Singer! That’s pretty great. (CHCH, 8 p.m.)

Thursday

Breaking Boston is a new reality show about four working-class women in Boston trying to improve their lives, and it’s produced by Mark Wahlberg, who seems determined at this point to become the new king of episodic reality television. Maybe he got bored with the Entourage movie? Who knows. (A&E, 9 p.m.)

Sirens is a show produced by Denis Leary, who apparently decided to go the opposite route from Rescue Me and instead do a show about emergency workers (EMTs this time, rather than firemen) that’s a wacky comedy rather than a gripping drama. The cast is funny (and features Isaiah “The Guy From The Old Spice Commercials, You Know The One” Mustafa in a supporting role) and the writing is pretty good. Surprisingly entertaining outing here, and recommended. (Comedy Network, 9:30 p.m.)

Friday

The Simpsons rerun of the week: “Das Bus,” the one in which the school kids get bus-wrecked on an island somehow and parody Lord of the Flies. “So the children learned how to function as a society, and eventually they were rescued by… oh, let’s say Moe.” (MuchMusic, 9 p.m.)

The Weekend

We forgot to mention the premiere of Resurrection last week, mostly because we watched the pilot and then forgot about it immediately, which is not the greatest sign for a show whose story hook is “people come back, inexplicably, from the dead.” Also it turns out when you see Kurtwood Smith in literally any show now, you just think of him as Red Foreman and keep waiting for him to call somebody a dumbass. (City, 8 p.m. Sunday)

Continuum is back for a third season, and we have nothing to say about that other than that it pleases us. (Showcase, 8 p.m. Sunday)

It’s unclear why Crisis is open-ended rather than finite in duration—kind of like it’s unclear why Under The Dome was extended to a second season (a second dome maybe? Who knows). Again, we have here an action-thriller series with a premise that limits the timeframe of the show by design (in this case, a group of terrorists takes a busful of children of important/powerful people hostage so they can call the important/powerful people and threaten to murder the kids so the important/powerful people will follow their commands). What happened to the miniseries? Miniseries were a good idea for exactly this sort of story! Anyway, Gillian Anderson is in this, so we’ll end up watching it, but man, think these things through, TV people. (NBC, 9 p.m. Sunday)